INCOME GENERATION

Income generation was initiated in 2001 for the purpose of providing income generating activities for vulnerable villagers. The main aim of this project is to improve the living conditions and natural and human resource management in underprivileged communities in Rwanda. As a result, RVCP proposes 4 projects:

Beekeeping

Pig Rearing

Rabbit Rearing

Rice growing project.

The beneficiaries of these projects include 3 rural youth clubs and an association of widows, located in the Huye district.

Beekeeping Project
The Beekeeping project is run and owned by the Nyakagezi widow association and aims to empower women to effectively manage themselves and the natural resources of their environment.

In 2009, the beekeeping project faced a major setback when many of the hives were vandalised. As a result the number of beehives decreased from 30 to 11. Due to this disaster, the 11 beehives were moved from Mont Huye to a small forest closer to the association of women and where a better environment is available for the bees.
This project has potential to be highly productive and successful. One beehive can produce 3KG of honey per season and 1KG of honey can reach 3000 RWF at market. As a result, one beehive can make 18,000 RWF per year.

The recent harvest shows that the project may be self-sustainable in two years time. RVCP would then like to expand to Sovu youth club and duplicate the project’s success there.

Rabbit Rearing
As it was in plans since 2009 and under the support of Mr. Bjorn, an IP from the Netherlands, the project has been reinforced, and another project to motive primary students was initiated. The project was entitled theRabbit for Performance. Last time, pupils who performed well during the first term, i.e. the firsts in their respective classes from year one up to six, were given a female rabbit, as an award and a motivation to keep on performing good. The students were to rear these livestock not only to reinforce their scholar curricula on biology, general knowledge and agriculture, but also to introduce animal proteins in their daily ratios and the last but not the least to generate income.

NYAKAGEZI youth club has such project that will help its members improving their life standards in future.
The rabbit project is owned by the Nyakagezi youth club. Club members take care of the rabbits to breed them before selling on the baby rabbits. Rabbits were chosen since they have a short gestation period and are able to produce a number of offspring. This enables members to make a profit quickly.

The youth group use the money to pay school fees, cover medical insurance and buy clothes. The project has faced some problems over the years but is planning to address them with the help of training from a veterinarian.

Rice Project
The rice project is owned by Nyanza youth club and will improve their livelihoods by promoting rice productivity through the use of mineral and organic fertilizers combined and the construction of a water reservoir so that the quality of the land will be enhanced.

RVCP aim to build a small reservoir to regulate the water flow and allow the target group to control irrigation. The reservoir will increase the yield by 70% in the first year.